An Inglewood man was charged Monday with shooting a 21-year-old transgender woman during a robbery and forcing an 11-year-old girl into prostitution, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Robert James Spells, a 30-year-old black man, was charged with one count of capital murder with a special circumstance of killing someone during a robbery. Spells, who is due in court Monday, was also charged with six other felonies including second-degree robbery, offering the child to men for sex and two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child.

On Dec. 3, 2014, Deshawnda “Ta-Ta” Sanchez called 911 at about 4 a.m. stating she had been robbed and assaulted. While pounding on a door for help in the 6100 block of S. Wilton Place, she was shot. Police have not specified what was stolen from Sanchez but said her call was key in identifying Spells as the ...

A Long Beach man who yelled racial slurs at three black men sitting on a bus bench before pulling out a gun and opening fire then later shooting at a police officer was convicted in February of murder and attempted murder, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

A jury deliberated for one day before finding Darryl Harnish, a 67-year-old white man, guilty of killing 37-year-old Terry Alexander. The jury also convicted Harnish on Feb.11 of one count of assault with a semiautomatic firearm of Arthur Vega, a Long Beach police officer.

Shortly after midnight on April 19, 2012, Harnish yelled racial slurs and threatened to kill three black men sitting on a bus bench at Pacific Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway in Long Beach, according to a statement from prosecutors.

Alexander, who was sitting on the bench, rode his bike toward Harnish, who opened fire ...

The first to be killed on the weekend of Dec. 20 was 17-year-old Erik Sainz, who was shot in the driveway of a West Puente Valley home that Friday afternoon. Then came Matthew Albert Garcia, 26, who was found dead on the sidewalk in Rosemead about an hour before sunrise on Saturday.

The average Latino homicide victim in Los Angeles County is 15% more likely to be killed on a weekend — defined here as Friday, Saturday or Sunday — than victims of other races or ethnicities, according to a Times analysis of the more than 13,000 Los Angeles County homicides recorded from 2000 to 2014 in the Homicide Report.

A Tustin man who fatally shot his estranged wife in the parking lot of a Montebello restaurant where she worked was sentenced Feb. 23 to 50 years to life in prison, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Arthur Andrew Andrade Jr., a 31-year-old Latino, on Monday was denied a new motion for a trial. A judge also denied a request to reduce the jury’s verdict from first-degree murder to manslaughter or second-degree murder.

In December, Andrade was convicted of the March 16, 2013 murder of his estranged wife, Esperanza Soria. Soria was shot six times as she sat in her car in the parking lot of a restaurant.

Tramel Laqune Kerl, a 39-year-old black man, was shot and killed Saturday, Feb. 21 in the 9900 block of South Budlong Avenue in Westmont, according to Los Angeles County coroner’s records.

About 1:43 a.m., two black men were walking on the north side of West 99th Street when they approached a light-colored parked sedan across the street and opened fire, said Lt. Eddie Hernandez of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Kerl, who was sitting in the driver’s seat, was wounded and pronounced dead at 1:54 a.m. at the scene, said Ed Winter, assistant chief of investigations for the coroner’s office.

The men then ran north on South Budlong Avenue, Hernandez said.

“Everyone is telling us that no words were exchanged,” Hernandez said.

When the murder trial for the men charged with killing her son began four weeks ago, Belverly "Nico" Brown-Duncan stopped parking in front of her home, unable to bear the sight of where he had been slain.

Oscar Duncan, 23, was shot in the head June 4, 2012, steps from his front gate. He had just come home from dinner with his girlfriend. Her son was a football captain, homecoming king and youth pastor. He had done nothing wrong.

On Friday, a jury found Hopeton Bereford Parsley, 25, and Kevin Dwayne Green, 31, guilty of first-degree murder, with gang and weapon allegations. A jury also found Green guilty of a robbery 10 days prior to the shooting.

Duncan grew up in Venice's Oakwood neighborhood. At 14, he proclaimed that he wanted to be a pastor. His mother often found him awake in the early morning, studying his Bible. He ...

How effective are the rewards offered in homicide cases? Payouts are rare, but detectives say they still believe in them, and politicians continue to approve them.

In the LAPD's latest reward announcement, $50,000 was offered Thursday for information in the shooting death of Moses Nelson, a 32-year-old father of three who was gunned down by an assailant on a bike in November.

It is the third reward announced this month for tips in homicide cases. On Feb. 5, $50,000 was offered in the case of Antonia "Toni" Yager, who was stabbed in December inside her home near Larchmont Village. A day later, the city and the Police Department announced $75,000 for information in the killing of Bert Crump Jr., 17, who was shot Aug. 22 in Vermont-Slauson by a gunman on a bike.

In the Nelson case, an image of the bike-riding gunman was captured on ...